'Heist Society' adaptation goes to Warners

Warner Bros. has won a multistudio bidding war to pick up "Heist Society," a young adult thriller novel by Ally Carter. Shauna Cross is attached to adapt with Denise Di Novi producing with Di Novi Pictures' Alison Greenspan.

Warners beat out Disney, Paramount and Summit, all of which jumped at the chance to bring to the screen a book which can be described as "The Thomas Crown Affair" with teens.

The book, which hits stores next week, follows a young woman named Katarina Bishop who hails from an extended family of cat burglars and master thieves. The girl leaves her illicit life behind, but when her father is the prime suspect behind a mobster's missing art collection, she assembles a crew to track down the art and steal it back.

While in the book the protagonist is her teens attending a boarding school, the studio is going to age the adaptation a notch so that the characters are in their early 20s.

Carter is best known as the author of young adult mystery series known as "Gallagher Girls," about a boarding school for girls who are spies-in-training.

Di Novi Pictures was behind Warners' adaptation of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" young adult books as well as the studio's adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks book "Nights in Rodanthe."

Cross, repped by WME and Jaret Entertainment, wrote the Drew Barrymore-directed female empowerment movie "Whip It!" as well as "If I Stay," a Black List script that is set up at Summit with Catherine Hardwicke attached to direct.